


see me

by mareas



Series: unstitched [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, background atsukage, i'm not writing everyone's names in the tags wtf their teams will have to suffice, ushijima is also very loved, ushijima is in love you already know what's up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:15:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28584837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mareas/pseuds/mareas
Summary: It’s only during his last Interhigh that Wakatoshi realizes that, while everyone else asked about volleyball, Sakusa Kiyoomi was asking abouthim.Or: Ushijima Wakatoshi is seen at various tangled moments.
Relationships: Sakusa Kiyoomi/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Series: unstitched [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100006
Comments: 72
Kudos: 214





	see me

**Author's Note:**

> sequel to “do my best to do you right” which is also ushisaku and which you don’t necessarily have to read to read this one. i do suggest you read it if you want to witness sakusa losing his mind, and also because it’s the funnier piece of this series.
> 
> i will write ushijima as a good dude with friends who adore him as a cleansing ritual to get rid of the evil that lurks in his ao3 tag.
> 
> **additional warnings**
> 
> if you want to skip the explicit parts, skip the scenes that start with:
> 
> 1\. "wakatoshi is a simple man"  
> 2\. "'you're killing me'"

By age fourteen, Ushijima Wakatoshi already knows that his strongest weapon isn’t unstoppable. 

On the other side of the court other kids stare wide-eyed, first at their own forearms, as if asking _Why? Why didn’t you send the ball where I wanted you to?_ Then they look up at him. A few rotations later, they’re getting a hand on it. The next set, they’re receiving his serves haphazardly. By the time they manage to kill the southpaw spin, Wakatoshi’s team has won the match.

Still, Wakatoshi is used to his rivals getting used to him. He plays against the same people multiple times, and every time, he notices, they get used to him faster.

And then, one day, someone serves a ball directly at him. His muscles move on instinct. He tenses, legs bent, and holds his arms out, and he knows, just like he knows that he’s not unstoppable, that it’s a perfect serve receive. The ball comes into contact with his skin, it seems to linger there for a second, and then it’s ricocheting away, spinning at an odd angle, fast and disobedient.

Wakatoshi doesn’t have to stare at his forearms and wonder why, because he knows: this is his own weapon aimed at him. This, he isn’t used to. This is new. For the first time, Wakatoshi is the one caught staring.

  
  
  


By age 19, Ushijima Wakatoshi can say he has spent his whole life answering questions about volleyball on the court, in corridors, facing cameras with microphones hovering before him. Teammates, rivals, news anchors. _What’s on your mind when you’re receiving_ and _how do you stay focused_ and _do you have any advice for a rookie?_

“It’s because you’re that good,” he’s told. 

Being good, Wakatoshi realizes, comes hand in hand with being admired. He knows what to do with being good: he plays, and he wins. But he isn’t quite sure what to do with the admiration. It doesn’t make a difference, Wakatoshi concludes, because he has never known anything but going all out, whether on the orange court or at the tiny empty park near his mother’s house in Miyagi, where old ladies do radio taiso on the weekends. 

With or without a crowd, with or without the scrutiny and the admiration, he’s good. Good enough to be asked.

It’s only during his last Interhigh that he realizes that, while everyone else asked about volleyball, Sakusa Kiyoomi was asking about _him._

++++

The first time Wakatoshi really notices Sakusa Kiyoomi’s eyes, it’s somewhere in Shibuya under falling petals of sakura trees.

Wakatoshi has never seen eyelashes that long. There are so many of them that they clump together sometimes, like little triangles over his eyelids, and they are so curly. They frame his eyes somehow intensely but equally delicately. It’s—pretty. 

Sakusa’s eyes are a black more viscous than ink, thinner than tar, darker and warmer than what Wakatoshi imagines outer space looks like. Their own distinct, separate shade and texture. Wakatoshi now knows, this is Sakusa’s alone. There is coal next to onyx next to ebony next to the ceaseless black of Sakusa’s eyes.

He remembers Hayato telling him, back when Wakatoshi would let his teammates color the sketches he drew, that black is the absorption of every color. Looking into Sakusa’s eyes, he thinks maybe it’s not only colors that get sucked in.

++++

When Wakatoshi tells his fellow Shiratorizawa ex-teammates—those available at the moment— that he has a boyfriend, they make fun of him for announcing it like he’s at a press conference.

“What’s with the formality? I thought you were gonna say you were quitting volleyball,” says Reon.

“Why would I want to quit volleyball?”

“I don’t know! That’s the point! You started the text by saying ‘to whom it may concern!’”

“To be fair, Wakatoshi always words his texts kinda like that,” Semi says.

“I do.”

“Anyways! Who’s the lucky guy, Wakatoshi?” Reon yells.

Wakatoshi considers the question for a while. 

“Me, I suppose.”

Semi snorts. Tendou laughs loud and piercing. Reon says, “No, I—” and scratches his forehead before continuing. “Your man, Wakatoshi, who’s your man, who’s the guy you’re dating?”

“Ah. Sakusa Kiyoomi. Itachiyama graduate, he plays for the Black Jackals now.”

“We know who Sakusa is, dude,” Semi rolls his eyes as Tendou goes, “Awwww.”

Reon smiles at him through the camera. “Good for you, man. Sakusa must be over the moon.”

“Right?” Semi cuts in. “Kid must be walking on air.”

Wakatoshi thinks he’s missing something. “Am I missing something?”

“Nothing! Ask him how long he’s liked you next time you see him.”

“No hazing Wakatoshi’s boyfriend over the phone!” Tendou interrupts. “I have a question, Wakatoshi-kun.”

“Yes?”

“Are those raisins?” he asks from his little assigned rectangle on Wakatoshi’s screen.

Wakatoshi turns around and notices the pack of raisins sitting on his kitchen counter. “Yes,” he says, then he turns back around to boil water for tea.

Everyone on the call remains silent.

“You eat raisins now?”

Wakatoshi is a renowned raisin disliker.

“No. Kiyoomi likes his oatmeal with raisins.”

They’d gotten the big pack at the supermarket. Wakatoshi guesses he’ll have to keep them until Kiyoomi next comes to Tokyo. Soon, hopefully.

“Sakusa keeps food at your place?”

“He spent the past four or so days here.”

Someone curses, someone whistles, someone goes, “Four days?!”

“Or so.”

More silence, and then—

“Dibs on best man,” Reon says.

“Wait a minute, no way—”

Wakatoshi tunes them out, but he’s smiling to himself as he warms his hands around his cup of tea.

++++

Sakusa Kiyoomi has started to mess around with the furniture inside Wakatoshi’s head. He’s sprawled on the couch and sitting on the kitchen counter and jumping on the bed, all at the same time. Wakatoshi can no longer walk into his own brainspace in the dark, because he will fall on his ass and then realize that Kiyoomi moved the chairs and is sitting on one looking out the window.

He realizes this while at the convenience store where he stopped to get barley tea for Tobio and a waffle chocolate ice cream for Kourai.

Wakatoshi walks past the premade meals aisle and eyes the onigiri. He automatically searches for the umeboshi one, Kiyoomi’s favorite. A dumb thing to do, since Kiyoomi is all the way in Osaka, not here to eat the hypothetical onigiri that Wakatoshi would hypothetically get for him.

The personal hygiene products remind Wakatoshi of the fancy shaving cream that Kiyoomi only gets online.

The floor wipes with little faces drawn on the package remind him that Kiyoomi thinks those are the worst, and that the faces are a marketing strategy that works on people who like buying cute things—the entire Japanese population, including his cousin and Bokuto Koutarou.

The tray of daifuku near the cash register reminds Wakatoshi of other traditional sweets, and of how Kiyoomi bites the tail of a taiyaki first and leaves the head for last because he likes it better.

He frowns as the girl behind the counter flips through his change. Why is everything in a convenience store suddenly about Sakusa Kiyoomi? And if even a convenience store is about him, how is Wakatoshi supposed to walk into his apartment, where he’s actually spent time in Kiyoomi’s company, and not make everything about him too?

Wakatoshi gets on the train and pulls out the pamphlet promoting office supplies that the cashier slipped into his plastic bag. The shades of printer ink catch his eye: yellow, cyan, magenta, and black. This black can’t hold a candle to the black of Kiyoomi’s eyes, and— _seriously? Printer ink?_

The voice in his head sounds a little bit like Shirabu Kenjiro, he realizes. He wonders if Shirabu gets along with the multiple clones of Kiyoomi remodeling the entire place in there. It’d be nice if he did.

++++

Wakatoshi plays video games with Tobio and Kourai sometimes. He is currently sitting on the couch in the apartment two floors above his, getting murked by Kourai on Mortal Kombat. Wakatoshi is the worst at fighting games, but Kourai and Tobio aren’t good either. They like Mario Kart. Every time they try to branch out, they end up going back to Mario Kart. 

Wakatoshi watches his character's health bar empty progressively, then frowns as Kourai delivers the final fatal blow and kills his character in the most unnecessarily violent way. If his life were a video game, Sakusa Kiyoomi looking into his eyes for over a second would always be a critical hit. It’s been about two weeks since those four days that Kiyoomi spent in Tokyo, but Wakatoshi already knows. One look and he is immediately down 50% of his real human being health points.

“I have—someone,” he starts, “that I’m seeing. Romantically. I think.”

“You’re dating someone?” Kourai asks.

“Yes. I think.”

“Oh. So I can’t be your official wingman anymore?”

Kourai self-appointed himself Wakatoshi’s wingman years ago. Wakatoshi lets him because he lets him and Tobio get away with everything.

“Sorry. It won’t be necessary anymore.”

“Are you gonna tell us who it is?”

Wakatoshi realizes that he has told many people about this now. This is his life now.

“Sakusa Kiyoomi. MSBY Black Jackals outside hitter.”

“We know who Sakusa is, Wakatoshi-san,” says Tobio. 

Kourai stretches out his hand toward Tobio, who high fives him immediately. Wakatoshi doesn’t know what that’s about. Kourai then turns to him.

“Cool. I approve. You have my blessing.”

“Thank you.”

“Give him your blessing, Tobio.”

Wakatoshi thinks he would date Kiyoomi anyway, blessing or not, but he still waits for Tobio to half-chew his pork bun and swallow it.

“Congratulations, Wakatoshi-san. I wish you happiness.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay!” Kourai claps his hands. “Wanna Mario Kart?”

++++

When Kiyoomi doesn’t wear a mask, Wakatoshi can tell if he smiles. Obviously. Because he’s not wearing a mask, and his dimples show, and Wakatoshi’s brain makes that noise flies make when caught in an electric fly swatter. He usually does something stupid after. The first time, sitting in a boba shop, he told Kiyoomi about his dimples. Hardly relevant information, considering Kiyoomi had most certainly seen himself in a mirror before and therefore knew about his own dimples.

Wakatoshi is not a thing noticer, especially not a thing-about-another-person noticer. But he has mastered the craft of reading Kiyoomi’s eyes like he can read the court before an attack. He made a discovery recently. A discovery that had lasting effects on him, since he feels like he is full of the gas inside balloons that makes people speak funny whenever he remembers. 

Kiyoomi smiles with his eyes.

They narrow a little bit, his eyelashes lower just slightly, and that black becomes glossy, like it reflects the light. 

Wakatoshi is still trying to learn how to not freeze up when it happens. 

He’s realized, unexpectedly, that he’s very bad at not showing emotions on his face. He feels so full of everything when they’re together that it spills out of him _somehow._ If he doesn’t blurt it out like the day Kiyoomi took him around Tokyo, he's blushing all the way up to his ears, and if he’s not blushing fiercely he’s reaching out to touch Kiyoomi or to pull him close. 

At first, he thinks maybe it’s just him. Maybe something essential in him changed overnight and now he is somebody who freezes up and blushes and loses his brain-to-mouth filter when he’s smiled at. There’s only one way to test it, so during his next visit back home, he asks Goshiki to smile at him. Goshiki obliges after a lot of sputtering, and Wakatoshi doesn’t freeze up at all. In fact, Goshiki seems to be the one blushing violently.

“Ah. Only him, then.”

“It’s only what?” 

“Nothing. Lovely smile, Goshiki. Thank you.”

++++

The problem is that Wakatoshi, once more, isn’t someone who realizes things about other people, but with Kiyoomi, he realizes the same thing over and over again and it never loses its initial charm. Like how his curls are loose after a shower and they curl more and more as they dry. Like how he tucks them behind his ear when they start getting longer.

“Have you ever straightened your hair?” he asks one day. It’s one of those questions that his brain spits out as a defense mechanism when he looks at Kiyoomi for too long. It's like a command. 

They are at his place, the window is cracked open and there’s wind coming in. Kiyoomi is leaning against the kitchen counter reading the back of a bag of soba noodles. The wind untucked his curls and now they hover in front of his eyes. Wakatoshi has been trying to get back to the magazine he was reading for seven full minutes, but he can’t stop staring.

Kiyoomi raises his eyebrows at him for a fraction of a second. Wakatoshi wonders if it’s tiring being that beautiful. 

“You want me to?”

“It’s not that. I am curious.”

“Yes. In high school.”

Wakatoshi can’t imagine it. When he tries to visualize it in his head, he sees a whole different person.

“I’d let you straighten it,” Kiyoomi says. There’s a sparkle in his eyes.

Wakatoshi frowns at the magazine that he was attempting to read. He doesn’t necessarily understand hair straighteners. They are traitorous. Wakatoshi tried straightening Tendou’s hair once, and all he did was burn the tips of his fingers. More than once. What if he messed up and Kiyoomi’s hair remained straight forever? He shudders.

“I would be too scared to.”

“I know,” Kiyoomi says. 

Wakatoshi is about to tell him that he could learn anyway, but— “Did you say you would let me because you knew I wouldn’t?”

Kiyoomi’s right hand goes through his curls, tucking them behind his ear again. Only one of his dimples is visible from this angle. Wakatoshi almost sighs.

“Partly. I like your concentrating very hard face, that’s why I said it.”

++++

Wakatoshi is a simple man. He’d like to think so. His apartment in Tokyo isn’t luxurious, it’s spacious and has a nice view, and also only one bedroom, a medium sized living room, and a kitchen. If he wanted something flamboyant he could afford it, but he doesn’t. Because he is a simple man.

Sometimes, though, as simple people are bound to, he gets curious. And then that curiosity mutates into want, and when Wakatoshi wants something it’s hard for him to let it go.

Which is why when the idea of putting his mouth where his fingers currently are—two knuckles deep inside his boyfriend, that is—materializes inside his head, it kind of sinks its teeth in and refuses to let go.

Kiyoomi is on his knees on his own bed, face buried in a pillow. He's been on the verge of coming for _a millennia, Wakatoshi, please._ Wakatoshi is kneeling behind him. Like the simple man he is, he gets straight to the point. He ducks his head and plants an open mouthed kiss right there, right where his fingers are almost completely buried.

Kiyoomi clenches around him for a fraction of a second, and then shivers with his full body. Whatever he says is muffled by the pillow, but Wakatoshi knows him, and knows it was probably three individual curses in a row. He has no words to describe how it makes him feel that he can do this, have the prettiest boy he’s ever met like this, spread out and shaking under him. 

Wakatoshi does the same thing again, slower this time, and Kiyoomi’s back arches further before he lifts his head to stop whining into the pillow.

“What are you doing.” 

His unamused tone isn’t that convincing when he has to pant it out with his fucked out voice, but Wakatoshi thinks it's cute that he tries.

“You don’t like it?” 

It’s a genuine question. Wakatoshi is curious.

“It’s not—” Wakatoshi does it once more. Kiyoomi’s voice goes tense. “Keep that up and you’ll have to hire a bulldozer to scrape me off this bed.”

Wakatoshi coughs out a soft laugh. He’s so gone on Sakusa Kiyoomi, so absurdly infatuated with him. He flips him over, throws Kiyoomi’s legs over his shoulders, and kisses at his hole again before tonguing over it. 

It doesn’t last. Kiyoomi is wet everywhere, Wakatoshi’s spit on the insides of his thighs, hard again and leaking all over himself. Wakatoshi wants to spend his life making him look like this. Kiyoomi finally covers himself in cum when Wakatoshi pushes his thumb into him and continues licking and kissing and sucking at him. Then he kind of goes limp, chest still heaving. 

Wakatoshi places his legs back on the bed gently, crawls over him and kisses his neck, his shoulders, the constellations painted on his skin. He looks into Kiyoomi’s eyes and they’re glossy, his eyelashes wet. 

“I have to train tomorrow and my legs don't work,” Kiyoomi pants. His cheeks are pink, he’s sweaty, he’s everything. “I hope you have that bulldozer on speed dial.”

++++

Kourai and Tobio asked him about taking pictures of him exactly once, and that was the day Tendou asked them to. Wakatoshi told them to do it freely and not to worry about asking, and that was that. Which is why it comes as a surprise when they ask him again.

“Just ‘cause, y’know. You’re involved with someone now, what if it’s weird?” says Kourai.

“I don’t mind. And Kiyoomi would’ve told me if it was weird.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. He did tell me that he’s not going to take pictures for the page himself, I am sure he would’ve mentioned it then, too.”

“Okay.”

A week later, Kiyoomi calls and asks him if he started buying the same clay mask he uses. The short answer is yes. The long answer is yes, because it smells the way Wakatoshi’s pillows smell after Kiyoomi has stayed with him for a few days, and if Wakatoshi uses it and later goes to sleep, his pillows will logically smell the same. And also, how does Kiyoomi know this?

Kiyoomi then texts him a screenshot of the last post on the well-known Instagram page where Wakatoshi is wearing gray sweatpants, a towel slung around his neck, a cow print headband—Tobio gave him that—and the clay mask on his face. He’s leaning against a doorframe and scrolling on his phone. Wakatoshi doesn’t get what about the picture is supposed to be provocative. 

“We have different skin types, though,” Kiyoomi says after waiting for him to examine the image. “I can get you the one for yours if you want. Same brand.”

Wakatoshi knows exactly nothing about skin types. He doesn’t know how to say no without explaining the long answer about the smell and his pillow. So he does precisely that, breaks it all down into the phone. Kiyoomi doesn’t say anything. Wakatoshi is not a worrier, but the silence makes him want something to fidget with. That is, until he hears something like a hitch in Kiyoomi’s breath.

“You’re laughing at me.”

“No,” he says, as if Wakatoshi doesn’t have every single sound that comes out of his mouth catalogued. “Yes. I’m sorry.” Then, unexpectedly, “You’re so cute.”

“I was being serious.”

“I know.” Kiyoomi’s words are followed by silence again, the silence Wakatoshi knows would be filled with movement if they were sharing the same space, Kiyoomi’s fingers in his hair or under his shirt or inside his back pockets. “I miss you too.”

  
  
  
  
  


“I do not understand,” Wakatoshi says, waving his phone in Kourai’s face. “What about this image is Instagram worthy?”

“Lots of things, Wakatoshi,” he says, turning professor mode on. “First of all, you’re hot enough to be Instagram worthy at all times, okay? But with this one, it’s the composition, see? The mask and the headband, you know—domestic. The lack of a shirt and the towel, that’s obvious. The highlight, though—listen carefully—the highlight is the gray sweatpants.”

“... The gray sweatpants?”

“Oh, yes. The gray sweatpants.”

++++

Wakatoshi can officially say they’re past the phase where Miya Atsumu tells three dick jokes per minute when he sees him and Kiyoomi together. Wakatoshi is neither happy nor sad about it. The jokes themselves aren’t funny, but watching a dark shadow fall over Kiyoomi’s face at lightning speed will never not be fascinating. Then again, there are several things that get that reaction out of Kiyoomi, so Wakatoshi is fine with leaving that stage of their lives in the past.

They are at a conveyor belt sushi chain restaurant the day the dick jokes stop. Hinata is trying to fit two entire, enormous rolls of inarizushi into Bokuto’s mouth, as per the latter’s request. Predictably, it isn’t working. Bokuto physically can’t move his jaw to chew, and with each passing second it looks more and more like he’s going to have to spit them out on the table.

“Fuck no, you will _not_ spit that out,” Kiyoomi tells him. “I will never let you spike a ball ever again if you spit that out on the table. I swear, I will steal every single one of Miya’s sets and have coach bench you for the rest of your life.”

“What if he chokes and dies, Omi-san?” Hinata is starting to look scandalized. Should Wakatoshi be worried?

“I don’t care. If something is already in your mouth, you swallow it.”

Wrong thing to say, Wakatoshi realizes when Miya leans over the table and tilts his head. His eyebrows do that thing they do when he’s one millisecond from saying something that will aggravate Kiyoomi. 

“Not all of us are experts at fitting big things in our mouths. And just ‘cause that’s how ya like it, Omi-kun, doesn’t mean swallowing is for everyone.”

Hinata hides his face in Bokuto’s shoulder in an attempt to conceal his laughter. Wakatoshi can see his shoulders shaking, though, and he is certain everyone else can too. The shadow that was already present on Kiyoomi’s face gets even darker. Wakatoshi is pretty sure he’s about to manifest physical stormy clouds over his own head.

“You’re right,” Wakatoshi says, turning away from his boyfriend to look into Miya’s amber eyes. “That is more my thing, actually.” 

Bokuto loses the fight against the inarizushi, spitting out onto his own little plate. Hinata looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Miya keeps opening and closing his mouth like a fish. A handsome one, admittedly.

Kiyoomi reaches over for the tablet they used to order the food and starts fiddling with it as Miya continues sputtering. “Ughhhh, gross! It’s not fun when you tell me about it, do I look like I _actually_ wanna know?”

“I don’t know,” Wakatoshi shrugs. “You bring it up so much, it has to be because you are interested, no?”

Miya’s right eye twitches. 

Kiyoomi suddenly stands up, pulling on Wakatoshi’s sleeve. “One of you jerks get the check,” he says, already walking away.

“Thanks for dinner,” Wakatoshi waves over his shoulder. He waits until they’re outside to turn to Kiyoomi. “I thought you were going to order more food.”

“I ordered five more servings of the most expensive item on the menu,” he says. Then he tangles his fingers with Wakatoshi’s and pulls him down the street.

++++

A series of—unfortunate?—events leave Wakatoshi stranded in young adult heterosexual couple Youtube. The series of events in question consisted in lending his phone to Semi’s little sister last time he went to visit. He’s never minded her using his phone or putting clips in his hair or drawing all over his face. She says he’s her favorite, and that makes him feel nice.

Either way, his Youtube homepage is now a collection of videos of several young adult heterosexual couples. Wakatoshi isn’t interested, but the app’s automatic player decides that he needs to watch one video—or fifteen—and since the one that autoplays has subtitles, Wakatoshi ends up watching the whole thing from the homepage preview.

This is how he learns that these couples enjoy answering questions about each other on camera during an online practice that is apparently referred to as the “boyfriend tag.” Wakatoshi doesn’t understand what’s so compelling about it, but he has to say that it gives him a lot to think about. 

For example, he’d never tried to pick his favorite part of Kiyoomi. He doesn’t know what Kiyoomi’s favorite part of him is either, and now he’s kind of curious. He knows that Kiyoomi’s favorite part of him to kiss is the back of his neck, because he does it a lot, every time they meet. He thinks if he asked Kiyoomi about it, he’d say that it’s the easiest way to get a reaction out of him. It’s true. Wakatoshi can’t really help himself. Kiyoomi’s breath on his neck makes him shiver, his hair tickles where it brushes against his skin, he kisses him softly, lingering. Wakatoshi can’t see the back of his own neck, but when Kiyoomi’s face is pressed against it, he can feel himself blushing.

Wakatoshi frowns at his phone. His favorite part of Kiyoomi is hard to decide on, but he’d say it’s his eyes. There are many things to be found in those eyes. His favorite part of Kiyoomi to kiss, though, is the almost permanently scrunched up space between his eyebrows. Every time he kisses him there, Kiyoomi opens his eyes very wide and the furrow disappears briefly, and for that quick instant, he looks open, all open for him to see.

The “boyfriend tag” is foul, Wakatoshi decides. He won’t see Kiyoomi for another two weeks, and his bed feels too large without him. Also, someone should look into the psychological weapons kids are putting on the Internet for free. Wakatoshi is bed-ridden, or he will be until Kiyoomi calls him after practice.

++++

Wakatoshi wakes up from a nap with his eyes as wide as they can go and sits up in bed. He grabs his phone from his bedside table and dials the one person he always calls when he’s having a crisis or close to having one.

“Wakatoshi! To what do I owe the pleasure!” 

Tendou always picks up with a similar phrase even though they talk on the phone about three times a week.

“Tendou. Do you remember Iizuna Tsukasa.”

“How could I forget! Itachiyama setter, plays for the Hornets now, hm?”

“Do you think he is attractive?”

Tendou pauses for a second, then screeches out a laugh so loud Wakatoshi has to pull his phone away from his ear and glare at it.

“Sure,” Tendou wheezes, “if you’re into the whole, y’know, parted swoopy hair and big brown puppy eyes situation he’s got going on.”

Wakatoshi has neither of those things. He’s trying to figure out how he feels about it.

“Trouble in paradise, Wakatoshi-kun?” Tendou asks when he doesn’t reply.

“No… I think. Kiyoomi said something about him a while ago.”

“Uh-oh.”

“He said he used to have a crush on Iizuna. But me and Iizuna are nothing alike.”

“Mmkay, well, you don’t have to be alike for him to like you, though. Maybe that’s the reason he likes you better. Last time I checked, Sakusa was leaving packs of gross little dehydrated fruits in _your_ dehydrated-fruit-free apartment, not Iizuna’s. But if it’s keeping you up at night, Wakatoshi, just ask him.”

When they hang up, Wakatoshi goes on the Deseo Hornets’ website and frowns at Iizuna Tsukasa’s handsome face. He is fairly confident that he’s better at volleyball than Iizuna. Could he beat him at arm wrestling, though? Does Kiyoomi like brown eyes better? Is Iizuna a better cook? Does he have 20/20 vision? Is there anything he can’t eat? Wakatoshi is allergic to peanuts.

He is so riled up over the whole thing that when he opens the door for Kiyoomi an hour later, the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Does Iizuna Tsukasa have any food allergies?”

Kiyoomi takes off his shoes and his mask, grabs Wakatoshi’s wrist and pushes him towards the couch, then steps into the kitchen. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna make tea.” Wakatoshi can hear the drawers. “And you’re going to tell me why you’re asking about Iizuna-san’s allergies.”

“I was trying to figure out if he’s my rival." Then Wakatoshi remembers Iizuna is also a professional volleyball player in Japan. "Outside of volleyball.” 

“What does that have to do with allergies.” Ah. Nothing, now that Wakatoshi thinks about it. “I liked you before, while, and after I liked him. He used to carry a lint roller. I thought it was cute.”

Wakatoshi grabs his laptop and closes the tab where the Hornets’ official site is open, then shoves it to the other end of the couch.

“I can use a lint roller.”

“I know that.” Kiyoomi walks out of the kitchen, takes a few long strides and then he’s straddling Wakatoshi’s hips. He runs his fingers through his hair and pulls on it softly so Wakatoshi’s neck is bent back, head over the back of the couch, tilted toward the ceiling. His face is alight with amusement, what’s so funny? The fact that Iizuna Tsukasa has beautiful, big, brown eyes and Wakatoshi doesn’t? “Stop overthinking this.” A kiss to the side on his neck that almost makes him curl in on himself. Another kiss behind his ear. Wakatoshi is made of sugar candy. He dissolves under Kiyoomi’s mouth. “I don’t like him anymore. And I’ve always thought you’re hotter.” One more kiss, final, planted on his lower lip. “Now help me decide what to make for dinner.”

Wakatoshi lets himself be pulled. As if he could ever resist.

“Kiyoomi,” he says.

“Hm?”

“I’m allergic to peanuts.”

Kiyoomi lets go of his hand. “What a coincidence.” He turns to Wakatoshi, raises one eyebrow and says, “So am I.”

++++

Wakatoshi throws two more vodka gummy bears into his mouth. There’s something about everyone being together in Bokuto’s Tokyo apartment that feels festive. They’re chaotic, which Wakatoshi has learned to appreciate.

Everyone is doing something different, but the person Wakatoshi cares about keeping his eyes on is sitting on the couch across the room watching Komori and Kourai absolutely butcher a duet on Bokuto’s karaoke machine. 

Kiyoomi is wearing all black. Black turtleneck, black jeans, black belt, black watch. He sits with his arms crossed over his chest, one of his legs bent, the other stretched out in front of him. His furrowed brow, his pink mouth, his messy curls, he looks very—undressable. 

Wakatoshi wants to untuck the turtleneck and peel the black fabric off his skin slowly, uncover more and more pale skin until it’s off his wide shoulders. He wants to take his time, unbuckle that belt, strip the jeans off those long legs.

It’s the vodka gummy bears. Wakatoshi is not going to undress his boyfriend in Bokuto’s apartment. He just needs to get away from the traitorous bowl of alcohol soaked candy. And yet he stays and watches until the karaoke session is over and someone pulls out a deck of cards. He watches Kiyoomi shuffle, and is eaten alive by the need to do… something. To him. Right there where he is. He glares at the gummy bears. He needs some fresh air.

When Wakatoshi crosses the living room to get to the balcony, he stops for a second, stands right behind where Kiyoomi is sitting, and reaches out to place his palm against his cheek and swipe his thumb over it. Before he gets to slip away, Kiyoomi grabs his wrist and pulls until Wakatoshi is practically draped across the back of the couch. 

“You’ve been inhaling gummy bears for the past half hour. Everything okay?” Kiyoomi says into his ear.

“Yes.” No. Wakatoshi wants to pull down the edge of the fabric covering his neck, hide a kiss there. Desperately. But Kiyoomi is in the middle of a card game right now. “I just need some air.”

“Wear your hood if you’re going out or your ears will freeze.”

Wakatoshi tilts his head to kiss Kiyoomi’s cheek and hums in agreement, then steps back. It’ll do for now.

“Ew. Still not used to seein’ ya bein’ all affectionate in public. It’s gross,” Miya Atsumu says from across the room with a lapful of Wakatoshi's youngest teammate.

“I’ve seen your tongue go down Kageyama’s throat four times tonight. Shut up,” Wakatoshi hears Kiyoomi say before putting on his hood and stepping outside.

Hinata Shouyou is on the balcony, ending what seemed to be a video call with someone Wakatoshi doesn’t recognize. 

“Hi, Ushijima-san!” he turns, breathing out little clouds.

“Hinata,” he nods.

Bokuto’s apartment does have a beautiful view. And Wakatoshi can’t focus on it because beside him Hinata seems to be burning twice as bright as usual. Which is saying a lot, considering he’s blinding on a regular day.

“You seem happy,” Wakatoshi tells him.

Hinata turns that megawatt smile in his direction. “So do you,” he says, unexpectedly. Wakatoshi nods a little bit, looks toward the window and watches Kiyoomi. Him and Suna are waving middle fingers in Bokuto and Atsumu’s faces. Wakatoshi guesses they won, since there’s a smug tilt to Kiyoomi’s brows. “So does he,” adds Hinata.

“I hope he is,” Wakatoshi tells him.

“He is. I mean, he’s less frowny now. And there’s affection in his eyes a lot more frequently than before. It’s a nice change, I think.”

“It’s intense, no? To be on the receiving end of it.”

Hinata giggles. Wakatoshi can’t be in his presence without feeling like the kid is going to charm him into doing something horrible.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know, Ushijima-san. He only looks at you like that.”

++++

“You’re killing me,” Wakatoshi pants against Kiyoomi’s sweaty neck.

Wakatoshi is in Osaka, where the summer seems to be a trillion times hotter than the summer in Tokyo. Here, the heat comes directly from the earth, the air itself burns his skin. The air conditioner in Kiyoomi’s apartment would be enough if the 6pm sunlight wasn’t coming in through the window right next to the bed, and they weren’t naked and pressed together from head to toe.

 _“I’m_ killing _you?”_ Kiyoomi says, all breathy and raspy.

As it is, Wakatoshi is grinding into his boyfriend slow and lazy. He’s holding himself up on one elbow planted on the pillow next to Kiyoomi’s head, his left hand pressed to Kiyoomi’s belly, all lean muscle. He can feel him like this, can feel him breathe and shudder and grow tense and then loosen up, all through his left palm.

What’s killing him isn’t that, even though that’s definitely part of it. It’s Kiyoomi’s fucked-out sex face. His eyes darker than ever but molten, all warmth and half-lidded. His blinking slow, looking at Wakatoshi through those eyelashes. His almost permanent frown is nowhere to be found, the set of his brow relaxed. He’s beautiful under warm lighting. Wakatoshi can’t kiss him for over three seconds because Kiyoomi’s mouth goes slack in a moan every time. 

He came once already, all over Wakatoshi’s chest, and he’s still giving him fuck-me eyes.

“Yes,” Wakatoshi groans. Kiyoomi cups his face one handed, places his other hand over the one Wakatoshi has on his stomach. Wakatoshi turns his head to kiss the inside of his wrist, and he burns, burns, burns against Kiyoomi’s skin under the Osaka sunset. “You’re killing me.”

++++

Kiyoomi is on his back, holding his phone up in front of his face, and Wakatoshi is next to him, on his side, watching. He has four hours left before Kiyoomi has to get on his train back to Osaka, and he wants to do everything, make use of the time they have, and he also wants to just lay here and watch Kiyoomi fiddle with his phone. 

Kiyoomi has a beauty mark on his right wrist that Wakatoshi can see from here. There’s a little frown on his face. His hair is completely off his forehead, spread out on the pillow. Wakatoshi watches the Badtz Maru phone charm that Kiyoomi is holding against the back of his phone—the one Wakatoshi gave him back then, all those months ago, all those months that nobody knows Wakatoshi is counting in his head—slip from in between his fingers and hit him on the nose, then remain there, dangling in mockery. Kiyoomi flinches, scratches his nose, and goes back to the phone like nothing happened.

But everything happened.

Wakatoshi is pretty sure the world just started spinning at double speed. Is it just him? He suddenly feels like he’s barely holding on to anything. Kiyoomi is in charge of operating the metaphorical centrifuge machine of life and Wakatoshi is inside, plastered to the wall, and the only thing he can think about is him, the person making the world spin at double speed. 

Wakatoshi has never in his life felt like someone scrambled his vital organs. Sakusa Kiyoomi just put his lungs somewhere they don’t fit, god, Wakatoshi doesn’t know where he shoved them but it’s too small and he can’t breathe right, is he dying? Maybe he’s dying. He’ll have to call Shirabu and ask.

Later, though. He’ll call Shirabu later. Right now, flinching when the phone charm fell on his face, Kiyoomi just shook the bottle of the pinkest carbonated drink in the world and opened it inside Wakatoshi’s chest. There is pink foam everywhere. He needs to clean up.

That, too, he’ll do later. He crawls closer to Kiyoomi and kind of rolls over him, places one hand on the back of his neck and another on his cheek, buries his face against his throat and breathes him in. 

“Wakatoshi? Is something wrong?”

Yes, there is something wrong. Wakatoshi can’t find his lungs and his heart is stuck in his windpipe and there is pink foam in between his ribs.

Even so, he understands why Kiyoomi asks. He doesn’t really demand closeness this way. How funny, he thinks. For Kiyoomi to hate messes but make a mess of Wakatoshi like this. 

“No,” he speaks against the skin of Kiyoomi’s neck. He’s warm. He is the most organized person Wakatoshi has ever met, and the harbinger of chaos in his Tokyo apartment. He’s leaving in four hours. Wakatoshi kisses under his jaw. “Everything is fine. Just felt like it.”

Kiyoomi drops his phone onto the sheets and slides his arms around him, one making its way under his sweatshirt, the other moving up to scratch at his scalp.

At that moment, Wakatoshi realizes that he will never be able to find his lungs or dislodge his heart from his throat or mop up the mess of pink bubbles. Kiyoomi will bring a truckload of carbonated drinks, shake and open them one by one every time Wakatoshi is done cleaning. The world will never stop spinning at double speed.

  
  


“Shirabu.”

“Yes, Ushijima-san?”

“Is it normal to feel like all your skin is made of heart tissue when you look at someone. Or am I dying.”

Silence.

“Could you please be more specific?”

“Yes. Like you feel everything.”

“When you look at someone?”

“Yes.”

More silence.

“Right.” Suddenly Shirabu sounds like he’s being crushed under a rock. Maybe _he’s_ dying. Or maybe he’s just annoyed. This is the tone he used to use on Semi. “Ushijima-san, I can tell you with full certainty that you’re going to be okay. Stop worrying.”

“So I’m n—”

“Full certainty, Ushijima-san,” he interrupts. This is the tone he used to use on Goshiki, what did Wakatoshi even say to deserve the Goshiki tone?! “One hundred percent sure. Zero percent doubt.”

“Okay. Good to know. Thank you, Shirabu.”

++++

They are getting ready to watch a Black Jackals vs. Tachibana Red Falcons match in Kourai’s apartment when Tobio asks Wakatoshi if Komori Motoya has already given him “the talk.”

“The one where he threatens my life if I touch a hair on Kiyoomi’s head?”

“You know about it?”

Wakatoshi shrugs. “Tendou made me hate-watch _Friends_ with him.”

“Ooh, let’s make a ‘to hate-watch’ list,” Kourai says, pulling out his phone. “But yeah, that one. Tobio got it from Osamu, right?”

“Sort of.” Tobio shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “He said to be soft because Atsumu-san is fragile like a baby animal and then he said if I choose to knock his teeth out anyway he completely understands. Just, uh. With the accent.”

Kourai giggles. Wakatoshi clears his throat.

“Komori said that Kiyoomi doesn’t text him the middle finger emoji as often anymore, and that he now lets Bokuto borrow his Roomba, and to please not dump him and ruin it for all of them,” Wakatoshi says. Kourai laughs his bird screech laugh. “He also said if I must dump him, to wait until after Halloween, because he thinks maybe this time Kiyoomi will agree to match costumes since he’s too busy with me to be a full-time jerk. His words.”

Their laughter is cut short by the whistle signaling the beginning of the match. Predictably, they don’t speak during. Kourai yells at the screen, Tobio swears under his breath, but they don’t speak. They only make hand gestures at each other to pass the popcorn. To them, this is a ritual.

70 minutes later it’s the burden of the Jackals’ match point resting on the shoulders of their second youngest spiker. Sakusa Kiyoomi. _The love of your life,_ the voice inside Wakatoshi’s head supplies, and—okay. It doesn’t sound like Shirabu anymore. It’s deeper, rougher. Wakatoshi has been hearing it his whole life, because it’s his own. 

For now, though, he clenches and unclenches the fingers of his left hand like it’s him who is up to serve. Just like every time he serves the first ball of a match, he curls and uncurls his digits and thinks about the things he has clung tooth and nail to throughout his life in an attempt to make them remain. The things he can count on one hand.

His father. His left-handedness. A group of people walking beside him, all wearing the same shade of purple. The two wide-eyed kids in all white who have proven to him multiple times that they can soar into the sky alongside him. Volleyball.

Kiyoomi throws the ball into the air and runs up. Jumps. Skin to leather, his right hand collides against it. Wakatoshi watches it like it’s in slow motion, the flick of his wrist at the end. That serve. The serve from when he was a kid, the serve that said _Watch me. I’ve been looking this whole time, so look back._ Wakatoshi still hasn’t looked away. At this point, he doesn't think he knows how to.

The ball meets someone's forearms and seems to sink into them for one second before ricocheting off, dancing to its own tune. Stunning.

Wakatoshi uncurls his fingers. The things he wants to—and will—keep, he realizes, can no longer be counted on one hand.

**Author's Note:**

> most of all, i hope this opened at least one person's eyes re: the infinite possilities presented by the adlers trio.
> 
> thanks for reading <3
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/adierstrio)


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